Hey folks, I'm looking for suggestions for fun dungeons to explore while leveling my enchanter/cleric/mage. Good experience and decent drops are a plus (lots of empty slots to fill!), but I'm mainly interested in atmosphere. I love the feel of the Verant-era dungeons, but I haven't spent all that much time in them. I started playing EQ sometime around late Velious or early Luclin. The gnomes are level 21. So far I've hit: Steamfont randos from 1-6 (Grrr. Bark bark. Grrr.) Crushbone from 7-11 (/yawn) Najena greater skeletons, ogres and elementals from 12-14 (this was fun! earth elementals are decent charm pets) Upper Guk spiders from 15-18 (WTS spider silk) Unrest yard trash and first floor groups from 19-20 Deeper Najena (skeletons, goblins and spiders) at 21 I'll probably stay in Najena for a couple more levels. I'm not sure what's next. From the forums (mostly this thread and this one), it looks like I've got some good options: Solusek's Eye 25-35 ish? (130% ZEM) Permafrost 25-35 ish? (90% ZEM) Lower Guk 35-45 ish? (80% ZEM) Nagafen's Lair 30-50 ish? (80% ZEM) Castle Mistmoore 20-40 ish? (90% ZEM) Presumably the higher-level dungeons (Sebilis, Karnor's Castle, City of Mist, Howling Stones, the Hole, others?) are good from the high 40s to 60. So! Questions for you folks: What are some of your favorite dungeons? What camps or crawls in those zones do you recommend? Any drops I should try to pick up along the way? Suggestions for good charm pets? Lay some gnowledge on this gnoob
You can definitely do Mistmoore. My low 20s rogue/druid/enchanter can almost clear the zone-in courtyard there (watch out for robed npc's, those nukes hurt).
highkeep goblins from 20-35 are tough to beat as far as ZEM goes. I personally leveled in south karana 20-35 though, started with lower aviaks/centaurs and bull elephants etc, moved to gnolls around 25. You can also go around sniping hill giants and griffons in NK/EK once you're around 35. Ice giants in permafrost for great plat farming 40+.
Yes but extremely easy to beat as far as FUN goes. Screw Highkeep, never go to that god forsaken place. Fungeon route: Befallen -> Unrest -> Najena -> Sol A -> Lower Guk -> Sol B + Kunark: Kurns -> Dalnir -> Kaesora -> City of Mist -> HS -> Seb/Chardok
Splitpaw is often forgotten but it's a fun dungeon 30+. Mistmoore is another good one. Kedge Keep is one of my personal favorites though, often neglected the most however. Unfortunately most of the Kunark dungeons beyond Kurns are ignored due to their higher max hit/HP relative to classic zones for identical level mobs and the high ratio of caster : melee mobs. But if you're up for a challenge, Dalnir is an option (many wizards) in the 30s, as is Nurga. Droga is a 30-40 option.
I'm having a lot of fun in Kaesora. So far I've done from 42-46 there between the Library and Church camps. I run with a Mag/Nec/Clr, so I'm sure you could do the same with an Enc instead.
I recently went into Runnyeye solo with my mage at 42, everything was green, but I still nearly died when my pet got stuck in the ceiling/floor between floors. Also had a scare when a group of 5-6 sporelings popped on me. Definitely echo that there are many ways to die there.
Welp, I rounded out 24 in Najena. It was super fun! And I got 2/4 of my mage's epic pages, plus a couple of sol ro quest drops. I did 20-22 on goblins, skeletons and spiders near Najena's pool. At 22 the goblins started to go light blue, so I moved up to the north wing of the basement (with BoneCracker, the guard captain, and the mages' lair). Exp was awesome there even at 24 -- I bet I could've stayed until 26. The guard officer ogres are good charm pets: not too resisty, lots of hitpoints, and good damage when dual wielding and hasted. I think I killed everything in the zone except the Widowmistress. Aades and I even took down Najena and got a cool spellbook
Thanks for the suggestions all! Darch, what level range is Kedge good for? Any recommended camps? Underwater zones are a twisted kind of fun. I donno how many hours I spent charming in PoWater on AK... Not sure if I've ever been in Dalnir or Kaesora. I don't remember RunnyEye or Splitpaw at all. Adding 'em to the list!
Roughly 35-50. As a chanter you can get around pretty easily with water elemental illusion + alliance, minus a few trap KOS piranhas.
Splitpaw is nice and fun, but damn is it a run. You can collect the 4 unique tanned pages for nice turn in. That zone gets very dangerous past double doors. Cleric and enchanter npcs-ugh.
Paw definitely can be exciting. The respawn is pretty fast, and it can be difficult to make your way through when moving a 3-box crew (my Mag and Nec each died twice trying to make it back to the Ishva Mal - thankfully either my cleric didn't die, or I was able to camp him out, each time), but if you can make it to a camp where you are comfortable, and can handle splitting or taking two mobs at a time (with Enc this should not be a problem - the gnolls did not seem very resistant) it can be a great place to fight with very little downtime. Granted, once the Ishva Mal dropped Summon Corpse for me, I gated and never consider making the run again...but that is just me.
What Elroz mentioned is exactly what I'm currently doing. Its slower (anything is slow compared to hhk goblins though), but by the time you're done you'll be able to outfit all of your alts with splitpaw hide gloves and have a bunch left over for your trader.
Don't forget Dalnir! Lots of fun to be had there, and great atmostphere. Think you can start out about level 25ish on ground floor (with good group), then move down to third level as you approach high 30's... 40+ safest. Love that zone... have spent hundreds of hours on the third level over my EQ career.
I'll make my customary pitch for Kaesora: 1. The ZEM is high, so you get that. You can reasonably do 35-50 here if you want to (or just come from time to time in that range as the others bore you) 2. There are a good number of undead that don't run (I see you don't have snares; watch out because the phantoms do) 3. You can get some spectral shrouds (+5mr), spirit tomes (+6int/wins), and some 25% weight reduction bags on your way up through the levels to Xalgoz to get your HS key piece. 3a. I think there is a +9wis shield there too but I forgot. 4. It's really close to a POK book. For my money, Unrest is great in that 24-32ish range. It's pretty interesting with all the lobbies running around to keep you company and with the undead helps solve the snare problem. Dalnir is an interesting zone, it's dangerous, far from everything, and full of casters. Check it out at some point but wait until you have a good amount of levels over your competition there.
As I said before, I did 39-49 here, just leaving yesterday because I finally bored of Church before hitting 50. That said, there is so much loot. Some of it is of fairly low value, but you'll see so much of it, selling the same dagger for 25p isn't bad, when you have 6 or 8 of them to sell! As mentioned, there is a +8 Wis shield that drops (Strathbone Shell Shield). It drops off the spiders, which you will kill several on your way to the various camps. It is worth noting, dropping down to the left is a relatively safe drop (use lev), but the drop to the front, will aggro up to 4 mobs when you hit the ground. For me, I would use Eye of Zomm to pretarget mobs and send my Mage and Nec pets to grab aggro while floating my cleric down to begin heals. Once I got this figured out, it was great fun. Not sure where I am heading next, now that I have my 49 pets (Thanks Bum!), but Kaesora has been good to me.
Well, RunnyEye was a bit of a bust. It looks super fun (tiny sporelings! shroom-head men! and gobbos aplenty), but pathing and z-axis warps are a bit rough in the current version. Dungeon crawlers beware! I've been roaming around Solusek's Eye and alternating between fire-hose torrents of exp, and panicky wizard-pwn wipes followed by seat-edge CRs. This guide is helpful. I found the barroom a great camp starting at 25 (and still going strong at 29). Lots of nearby mobs, a safe corner to AFK in, and pretty decent pants/sleeves from the barkeep for my enchanter and mage. I think I'll move to the throne room and Lord Gimblox soon. Anyone know if the goblin high shaman drops this totem on TAKP? Allakabor seems conflicted on the subject.
Also inferno goblins (rogues) with Augmentation are badass charmpets. Once I got Clarity at 29, I started stun-tanking mobs with the pet backstabbing for ~150. Zow.
Also, could dark elves pretty much go Nektulos trash and newbie quests --> Najena --> Sol A goblins --> Sol A gnomes --> Sol B --> 50 in classic? Sorta silly that they could hit 50 without going more than 3 zones away from their guildmasters, heh.
That's funny, I never thought about this, but they definitely could. Lava storm is decent outdoors exp too prior to najena. I always thought the same of trolls. They could do swamp -> uguk -> lguk to 50.
So! Sol a is pretty hard to beat for experience. Around level 30 I moved from the barroom to the king/Gimblox camp. Fantastic experience, plus I picked up a ring for my cleric's epic. I tried lguk around level 35, but it was harder and slower so I headed back to sol a. At the throne room camp, I experimented with both Solusek goblins (rogues; triple if dual wielding and backstab for 191) and Solusek champions (warriors; also triple, more hitpoints) as charmpets. Although the rogues are definitely higher damage on mobs facing away from them, I found the champions fit better with my enc/clr/mage setup, where the charmpet tanks most of the time. So far, a sweet spot for charm leveling seems to be using a hasted, weaponized, high blue charmpet to slaughter low blues (grey- and yellow-con pets are a bit too breaky). I suspect rogue mobs backstab for much more damage here than they did on AK, but I don't have data to back that up. Charm groups with PC tanks could probably use rogue pets to great advantage. The gnomes are 39 now. Think I'll try Kaesora next.
Kaesora's pretty great exp. In the church at level 42 I was getting 1% exp per kill on each of my three toons. With a hasted, dual wielding, level 37 guardian of Xalgoz pet (the highest level that I can use Beguile on instead of Cajoling Whispers, for cheap charms; the level 37s are the ones that hit for 85) I could kill about a mob a minute. Each mob dropped 1 plat on average. Of course, I also wiped a bunch! And CRs are nontrivial, given the mix of live and undead mobs on the path down to the church. (Thanks Raven for helping me out with that CR!) Still, the church is a good camp. There are several safe AFK spots, and I scored a Xalgoz fang (one of two required drops for the Howling Stones key) on each toon. Good stuff!